MOREL Marine

Nationality : French
Contact : marine.morel@inrae.fr

Title

Study of rootstock-scion interactions to characterize the effect of rootstock on agronomic traits of interest in grapevine.

• Doctoral school : Life and Heatlth Sciences - University of Bordeaux
• Supervisor : Elisa Marguerit
• Funding : CIFRE PhD fellowship (INRAE/ Jas Hennessy & Co.)
• Project : PG_dépHy
• Périod : June 1, 2023 - May 31, 206

Abstract

Climate change can affect water availability, exacerbating drought problems. Among the possible solutions to adapt vineyards, the use of rootstocks maintaining sufficient yield and conferred vigor appears to be one of the most sustainable options which would allow traditional grape varieties to be retained and vineyards to be maintained without irrigation. A unique experimental design was created in the field; it consists of 55 grafted vine rootstocks with 5 scions allowing the study of existing genetic resources used abroad. A V. berlandieri × V. rupestris type F1 progeny was also created and consists of 450 individuals; it is cultivated in the field and in pots. The first genetic resources will make it possible to characterize the diversity on a large panel of rootstocks and to quantify the rootstock×scion interactions. The study of the second genetic resources, the progeny, makes it possible to characterize the genetic architecture of the traits preliminarily evaluated on the large panel of rootstocks.

The objectives of the thesis project are : 1-to characterize the genetic diversity within a population of commercial rootstocks in the field and within progeny by identifying the genetic associations between the polymorphism of molecular markers and the variability of agronomic traits and 2- to characterize the plasticity of agronomic traits according to the scion and its genetic architecture. This information could be also used to create new rootstocks.

The doctoral student will study genetic resources already implanted and genotyped. The first step of the work will consist of analyzing the data already collected to quantify the rootstock effect and evaluate the heritabilities of agronomic characters such as yield and mineral status. The second step will aim to characterize the rootstock×scion interactions and evaluate the plasticity of the yield and vigor conferred according to the scion from response curves. The third step will correspond to the identification of the genetic architecture of early nursery related traits and their plasticity depending on the scion.